All posts tagged ‘Computers’

It is sort of an unwritten law of geekdom that when we have opinions about technology, we must have very, VERY strong opinions. I faithfully adhere to this rule and had dually applied it to my sheer and unfettered hatred of all things Apple. I thought the iPods were ridiculous. I don’t care how small you can make it, it still sucked. I found the obsession with iPhones a complete joke and once pointed and laughed at a line of people outside Best Buy the night before a release. (Of course then I ran like mad but I still inflicted a wound or two on their egos.) I could give you a whole list of reasons and would vehemently defend them all.

Macs are not user-friendly. Yes, the menu scroll looks cool(ish) but I can get a skin for that on my Windows PC, thank you.

Why bother with that dumb two finger touch left-click dribble when you can just have two mouse buttons like every other self-respecting computer manufacturer?

The process of hacking the operating system (OS) is called jailbreaking. Does this mean they have you prisoner?

They are stupidly expensive and you are paying more for the logo of a half-eaten fruit to be slapped on the back than you are for the actual product.

Oh the list went on and on in this fashion. I even admitted in a previous post that I had never owned an Apple product. But very recently I accepted new responsibilities at work. With new responsibilities came a handful of new perks, not the least of which was a new company phone (to ensure that I actually NEVER stop working). And not just any phone, an iPhone 4.

I’ve reviewed several internet filtering and internet security products for GeekDad over the years. Each has pluses and minuses. I’ve decided to come clean with what my family runs: yes, we do filter the internet for our kids — but our filtering is more common-sense than technology solution (although both play a part).

After teaching my kids some fundamentals about computer architecture and the file system, I was able to introduce them to my favorite applications. I’ll describe them briefly here and write some other posts about how my kids have used them.

All of these applications are free to download, good for cheapo, ahem, cost-conscious geek dads like me. Furthermore, all of these applications run on Windows and OS X.

iTunes was one of the first applications we explored, mostly because my daughter wanted to move some music from CDs to her mobile phone. It’s very useful for ripping CDs and managing music, but we had to learn two non-obvious pieces of information.

First, we changed a setting so that CDs are ripped into MP3 files instead of AAC. On the Windows version of iTunes, choose Edit > Preferences… from the menu. On the General tab, click Import Settings…, then select MP3 Encoder from the list. This means that whenever you rip a CD, the songs are stored as MP3 files. It’s possible to generate MP3 files from AAC using iTunes, and it isn’t that hard, but I find it’s easier to just import to MP3 in the first place.

The second crucial piece of information is where iTunes actually places its files. We needed to find this so that we could copy files to my daughter’s cell phone. To find out where the files are, choose Edit > Preferences… from the menu. Click on the Advanced tab and you’ll see the location that iTunes is using for its files.

If geeks had ranks, I’d be a General or an Admiral, or maybe Grand Vizier. I know things that no mortal should know, arcane minutiae like how to set a proxy server in an .hgrc file or how to program in assembly language.

I don’t want my kids to know most of this stuff. Heck, I don’t think anyone should have to know most of this stuff. Usually, my wife and I encourage the kids to play outside, or play a board game, or read a book, or do something real instead of being in front of any kind of screen.

However, I also recognize that computers are useful sometimes, and I know that being proficient is a valuable skill. I wanted to show my kids a few tools that they could use for basic tasks, like taking pictures, ripping CDs, and creating drawings. I was surprised with the results.

When I teach anything, to any audience, I always try to get to the doing as fast as possible. In this case, there was one lesson’s worth of information that we simply had to cover before moving on to the fun stuff.

Photo by Ruben de Rijcke; used under Creative Commons Attribution license.

Even if you’re a Mac addict with a bumper sticker reading “I hate Bill Gates,” you have to tip your hat to the IBM PC, which debuted 29 years ago today. You may scoff, and point out that the Apple II, or Apple ][ if you must, had been out for over four years when the IBM PC first went on sale. But the PC was more powerful and, because it used off-the-shelf parts, cheaper, and so was really the first genuine personal computer that garnered interest from the general public.

The technical specs for the original IBM PC seem laughable today, of course: its 16k of standard memory, upgradable to 256k; its two 160k floppy drives (and of course no hard drive); its optional color monitor; and of course its $1,565 base price tag, which accounting for inflation would be over $3,600 today. But it really was a revolution, first in the business world and then later in people’s homes.

It wasn’t in 1981 when my family got an IBM PC — I think it was ’82, but I honestly don’t remember the date. It seems a little ridiculous to write this on a machine that, roughly, is to that PC as a Lamborghini is to a Model T — only with better gas mileage — but that PC changed my life. I was already a fan of Star Trek (at the time you didn’t need to specify which series you meant) and Star Wars, and I was nine, so having a computer in my house was just about the coolest thing ever. It had CGA graphics, which meant it could have up to four colors on screen at a time, one of which was black, and there were two palettes for what they advertised as a total of eight colors, but since black was in both it was really seven. The important thing is that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time.

I was already learning to program in BASIC at school on the Atari 400 and 800, and having a PC at home opened the world of programming up for me. Turbo Pascal was like a godsend, giving me programming capabilities I’d only dreamed of. And so began a career that lasts to this day. Yes, I’m your friendly neighborhood Assistant Editor, but I’m also a mild-mannered programming geek by day.

So lift a glass in toast to the original IBM PC tonight! It may be utterly obsolete and fit only for museum displays, but it’s pretty likely that whatever you’re reading these words on would be very different if it hadn’t come around when it did.

Everyday I seem to be kicking myself that I didn’t study computer science. I stare blankly at my screen and wish I could design an application then and there to work with my iPhone or some part of the Google monolith to do as I command. But, this geeky Arts major Dad is left to tinker with html, design websites using WordPress templates and reading books on CSS to try and learn a little more gain a semblance control over his digital life.

It is that experience that has me so interested in this new beginner;s guide to building and programming robots from No Starch Press. The Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 Discovery Bookshould come with every Mindstorms NXT 2.0 Kit. The author, Laurens Valk, has written a book for noobs. You need no experience with programming, in fact you need no experience with Lego (if there is indeed people out there who haven’t experienced Lego).

I have used Mindstorms in the classroom with children of a wide range of ages, but what I have mostly found is that the children aged 11 and 12 really engage with the Mindstorms programming environment. They want to manipulate and change the way their robot interacts with the world like they have dominion over their own mini-Cylon. But, as I am not a programmer and can only follow the basics as presented in the standard designs and programs they have had limited support and used a lot of trail and error. This is where this Discovery Book comes in handy.

As Geeks we are expected to have a certain set of skills that the majority of the population does not possess. This list is by no means complete, but I think it is a good sample of the skills required to be a true geek. I won’t pretend to have all the skills listed here. I even had to Google a few of them.

Like all good Geeks you should be able to utilize resources to accomplish any of these things. Knowing where to look for the knowledge is as good as having it so give yourself points if you are certain that you could Google the knowledge necessary for a skill.

Several months ago, I ranted a bit about the problems I had with my Vista desktop computer. After that article, I was contacted by Michael Simpson of Iolo Technologies about their product, System Mechanic.

System Mechanic is a an overall system cleaner. I thought it was definitely worth trying, especially since the eldest minion, my teenage daughter, often forgets to do what she’s supposed to do with basic programs like CCleaner, by Piriform. I wanted to see if there was a better way to keep her PC healthy.

I downloaded copies of System Mechanic on three computers: the newly-upgraded Windows 7 desktop, the Windows XP desktop used by the eldest minion, and the Windows XP desktop used by the youngest son, the tech genius minion.

The tech genius minion was the most skeptical of the three of us about System Mechanic. His objection was that you could download free programs that would do everything that this program does. He finally agree to try it after seeing it in action on my computer.

Downloading was simple and I had no glitches. The first full scan took several hours but I was able to keep the computer up and running during it without suffering any significant loss of processing speed.

Once the full scan was done, the program recommended a number of repairs.

Now, here’s where I really started to like it because System Mechanic explained both what it had found and why it needed to be fixed. I’m not a computer or tech expert thought I’ve learned bits and pieces along the way. So having a program explain, in simple English, what it was doing was not only a nice feature but it also taught me something.

After the tech genius minion saw the list of repairs that System Mechanic recommended on my desktop, he changed his mind about it. He still believes that you could get free programs to do what it does but it would take several different programs and they wouldn’t do it as efficiently as this one program. He wanted me to say he thinks it’s significantly improved his processing speed.

But here’s the part I really, really liked: you can set System Mechanic to run automatically in the background.

If you’re careful to remember to clean your PC every day, then this is not a huge advantage though it’s nice.

However, if you have kids using computers in your house, chances are that they are much less careful.

To the left is an example of what the screen shot will look like after System Mechanic finishes analyzing a PC.

For my teenager, I especially liked that it cleared away unnecessary start-up items. I know, she can do it herself. But she rarely does and it’s added protection against a program automatically setting itself to run.

If you click on the “options” tab, that’s where you enable all this to run in the background.

The program costs $19.95 a year of upgrades or $29.95 for two years of upgrades, both including the program itself. I did receive my copy for free but after watching it in action for over a month, I’m definitely going to buy it when my current subscription is up.

I like the convenience, I like that it could be uploaded to three different computers, and I like that it showed no difficulties/clashes with the anti-virus programs that are running on the various computers.

And I really like that the XP computers are running better. I can’t say with certainty how it’s affected Windows 7 processing speed because I uploaded System Mechanic only a week after I started using Windows 7. What I can say is that my desktop so far is working far better than Vista. Part of that, I think, is the cleaning done by System Mechanic, especially the way it cleans up after my kids use my desktop.

Last year, I wrote up a review about the Sony eReader. At the time, I wondered if anyone would invest in a dedicated eReader for $200 or higher when there are netbooks for around $300 that can do so many other things plus download books.

So when Samsung offered me a chance to test drive an N150 Netbook for a month, I took them up on it.

Samsung N150 netbook in bright red

The verdict…

It’s kinda nifty.

The N150 does exactly what it is designed to do: provide wireless internet access in a nice portable device with a keyboard not nearly as cramped as on a cell phone and a much larger screen. It’s not going to replace an eReader or a full-size laptop, for that matter, but it’s not supposed to do that. Despite its size, the keyboard on the netbook is far easier to use than I expected and didn’t feel at all cramped. If you need to download Microsoft Office 07, that will add to the overall price. I suspect, though, many people could install Open Office for free instead of buying another copy of Office 07.

The netbook is about the size and weight of my little portable DVD player. You can cart it around with little trouble and effort. It even fit into my larger purse and no doubt would fit fine in a backpack without any special cushioning. It has up to seven hours of battery life, meaning it will last almost a full day away from home or the office.

Despite my highly detailed issues with PCs and the Vista operating system, I have no complaints about the Windows 7 system that runs this netbook. There were no crashes and Internet Explorer didn’t jam once. I also installed Mozilla Firefox and also had no problems with that. The video does come across as a bit jerky. A clip that ran perfectly on my MacBook Pro (Saturday Night Live’s Timecrowave) had problems on the netbook. On the other hand, my MacBook Pro was $1200. I wouldn’t expect the same performance from a netbook that is about one-third of its cost.

I discovered yet another way to distract my kids with the built-in webcam. They loved being able to make videos of themselves or whatever was around them instantly. It’s true that you have to be right in front of the netbook to use the webcam, so it makes an awkward personal camera, but they liked hamming it up.

The N150 probably won’t satisfy if you’re looking to buy it as a primary computer. And the screen isn’t satisfying to use as an eReader. But as a portable computer, I could find few flaws.

I can’t remember when I last touched or even saw a floppy disk. Do you? Can we in truth say we knew the floppy disk was still alive that we might mourn its death now? The floppy disk had become an old pair of shoes, their soles and laces so worn out as to be useless, but with enough memories invested in them that throwing them out would give us pause.

I remember when floppy disks were actually floppy. I’m not quite old enough to recall the eight-inch ones, but oh, yes, I remember the five-and-a-quarter inch ones very well. My family’s first computer, bought when I was all of nine (I think) had two such floppy drives but no hard drive at all. I well recall the protective paper sleeves, the care not to bend the disk as you put it in the drive, the notch on the side that you had to cover with tape if you wanted to write protect the disk, having to pull a plastic switch to close the drive. I remember the pride I felt labeling a disk with the first Turbo Pascal programs I ever wrote. Of course, I had to write out the label before putting it on the disk so I wouldn’t damage the fragile plastic sheath. And I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time.

Yeah, floppies were pretty much a pain in the butt, weren’t they? Transporting them was always a pain because once you bent one even a little too far your odds of being able to use it again were slim to none. I remember the first Infocom game I got that required more than one disk, so partway through I had to swap them. I remember trying to — very carefully! — cut a notch into a distribution disk so I could reuse it. I remember my elementary school’s Atari 800s, whose floppy drives always sounded like they were grinding the disk into powder.

And then the three-and-a-half inch disks took over, and there was much rejoicing (yay!). Smaller, more durable, and with much greater capacity — the older, bigger, floppier ones didn’t stand a chance. By the time I was in high school anyone who hadn’t grown up with computers had no idea what a 5¼ drive was for: I recall at least two times when a student in one of the school computer labs put a CD in a 5¼ drive and, in trying to close the drive, broke the CD into pieces inside it.

Still, the memory of 3½ disks that sticks with me the most is having to install Microsoft Office on my work PC off of them. Thirty-two of them. Thirty-two of them that I had to sit there and swap, back and forth, making sure to keep them organized. For about two hours, that felt more like six. And I had to walk uphill both ways in the snow to get to work, too.

So, do you feel like showing your age, too? What are your floppy memories? When do you think enough people will be confused by the little 3½-inch disk icon that’s so often used for “save” functions that it’ll have to be changed? And is it strange to have nostalgia for something you would never actually want to use again?